Jay Leno
Updated: see below
During an interview with Elon Musk in May of 2009, David Letterman dissed the Chevrolet Volt. Shortly thereafter, Letterman remembered where his ad dollars come from and apologized, inviting spunky GM spokesmodel Bob Lutz to talk about the much-hyped hybrid on the show. In the end, though, Letterman's mea culpa seemed pretty half-hearted, and the Volt came off looking a little stodgy.
Now, Letterman's late-night rival, Jay Leno, has dropped kicked the Volt too, saying that he's not going to be first in line to get one because it doesn't really excite him: "It's not like when you pull into Bob's Big Boy parking lot with the Volt, you're going to open the hood." Which isn't especially nice -- especially for a big GM fan like Leno -- but whatever. The guy knows his cars, and he's entitled to his opinion.
Naturally GM fired back at Leno in its charmingly geeky way. With a big, adolescent "nuh-uh!", spokesman Rob Peterson said, "We've pulled into Bob's Big Boy parking lot, opened the hood and drawn some great attention." So there. Nyah.
But the funniest/weirdest response of all came from Erich Merkle of Autoconomy.com, who seems to have gotten sidetracked on the whole Bob's Big Boy thing. Insisting that Leno's priorities were a mismatch for the Volt, Merkle said, "The typical Volt driver might be a vegan.... They may be opposed to a Big Boy altogether."
Which is, like, (a) presumptuous and (b) WHAT?
Update: An "audibly annoyed" Jay Leno has backed away from all this hoo-ha by reassuring everyone that the Volt is a "breakthrough". But he's still not buying one.
[DetNews via Bengt; see also GreenCarReports]
